Transmittal of heartbeat signal at a lower level than heartbeat request

Abstract

A communication system, such as a wireless CDMA system, detects markers with fewer errors by having field units transmit the markers at different power levels (e.g., 9 dB for one marker and 11 dB for another marker). The difference in power levels of the markers allows the base station to identify the request markers using alternative criteria with a low probability of error, where the alternative criteria may include comparing the markers to respective energy level thresholds, monitoring occupancy of time slots, occupancy of mutually exclusive code channels, or combinations thereof. For example, in one particular embodiment, a request marker, which is generally a high priority marker, is transmitted with higher power, which improves the probability of detection and reduces the probability of false detection of the request marker.

Description

RELATED APPLICATION(S)[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 378,697, filed on May 7, 2002; U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 297,925, filed on Jun. 13, 2001; and is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 09 / 775,305, filed Feb. 1, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,079,523, entitled “Maintenance Link Using Active / Standby Request Channels,” by G. Rodney Nelson, Jr., et al; and U.S. application Ser. No. 09 / 997,621, filed Nov. 29, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,678,260, entitled “System and Method for Maintaining Wireless Channels Over a Reverse Link of a CDMA Wireless Communication System,” by James A. Proctor, Jr., which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09 / 730,376, filed Dec. 5, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,707,804, which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09 / 088,413, filed Jun. 1, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,222,832, which is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 08 / 992,760, filed Dec. 17, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,081,5...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013]In either case, a wireless communications system employing the principles of the present invention may improve performance of detecting the markers by having the field units transmit the markers at different power levels (e.g., 9 dB for one marker and 11 dB for the other marker), which can improve system performance. The difference in power levels of the markers allows the base station to identify the request markers using alternative criteria with a low probability of error, where the alternative criteria may include comparing the markers to respective energy level thresholds, monitoring occupancy of time slots, occupancy of mutually exclusive code channels, or combinations thereof. For example, in one particular embodiment, a request marker, which is generally a high priority marker, is transmitted with higher power, which improves the probability of detection and reduces the probability of false detection of the request marker.

Problems solved by technology

Such services were thought at first to be for the exclusive province of businessmen because of expected high subscriber costs.

There still is no widely available satisfactory solution for providing low cost, high speed access to the Internet, private intranets, and other networks using the existing wireless infrastructure.

First, the typical manner of providing high speed data service in the business environment over a wireline network is not readily adaptable to the voice grade service available in most homes or offices.

For example, such standard high speed data services do not necessarily lend themselves to efficient transmission over standard cellular wireless handsets because wireless networks were originally designed only to provide voice services.

Although wireline networks were known at the time when cellular systems were initially developed, for the most part, there was no provision made for such wireless systems to provide higher speed ISDN- or ADSL-grade data services over cellular network topologies.

This is quite dissimilar to the traditional environment supporting data transmissions in which the wireline medium is relatively inexpensive and is not typically intended to be shared.

Therefore, even though such users may remain connected to the Internet or private intranet continuously during an entire day, actual use of the high speed data link is usually quite sporadic.

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